One Step Closer to Saving Fairfield Lake State Park
But not before we talk about the constant drama this park has faced.
Today I’m catching up on some Fairfield Lake State Park news. I actually started drafting this over a week ago and put it on hold for writing something else. More things happened last week with the park, so I figured I’d do a catch-up post and get everyone up to speed.
To say I am tired and beat down on this is an understatement. I’m beyond ready for it to be over. Activism is hard and I’ve mostly been doing it from a research and online perspective so I can’t imagine how it is for those who are in it day in and day out for things like climate justice. Rest and finding joy in other things is an absolute must.
The last two weeks have been rather eventful for Texas Parks and Wildlife and Fairfield Lake State Park. I thought I’d do a rough update after a few weeks off from hitting the highlights here.
Backtracking to three weeks ago, we got news that the second offer from TPWD to Todd Interests had been denied by TI in the out-of-court portion of the eminent domain proceedings. It was to be expected and came on the heels of several weeks of quiet on that front. I think we call needed the break in battling the constant barrage of bad news coming out of the park. I had moments where I didn’t think of the park at all and it was delightful!
Around August 18th it came out that the potential TCEQ violation that had been filed back in July was investigated by that agency and a violation was found for stormwater. Brett Shipp at Spectrum News covered that. You can read the actual violation here. Eventually the report of evidence found for the enforcement action was posted by Alexander Neal and it was a doozy. I definitely recommend reading through it here.
The week of the 21st was busy. Starting on Tuesday, there was an article where the developer called for Chairman Aplin’s resignation and an investigation into Texas Parks and Wildlife. This was based off a press conference by one of his lawyers, which frankly got super hostile and unhinged towards TPWD. Both of them together were incredibly uncomfortable and honestly, they go to dark places.
Wednesday was the TPW Commission Work Session and Annual Public Hearing, with Thursday being the regular Commission Meeting. The Annual Public Hearing is where the public can basically air their grievances with the Commission on any subject and so there were folks from the Save Fairfield Lake State Park group who trekked to Austin to attend to say a few words about saving the state park. Sandy Emmons reported that at least 150 people had signed up to speak. I managed to listen to about two hours of the session before giving up. First, I had to wade through other topics such as chronic wasting disease (it’s becoming a big problem here), the state of our speckled trout fisheries and oyster fisheries (declining), and then finally the state park. After the state park, I listened to a few minutes of people stating reasons why Texas shouldn’t have bag limits on mountain lions and then knew I was about to get too angry and hung up the phone. (There’s been a strong push to get Texas to reclassify them as a game animal and actually have limits, which is why these idiots (sorry, not sorry) were protesting the idea of setting limits.)
Overwhelmingly the people who spoke about the state park were in favor of TPWD continuing their efforts to save the park. Only two people stood up against TPWD and the state park. One of those people went on to elaborate about how all the buildings were gone now and that new roads had been cut in the park. It wasn’t a very effective speech and you can hear the room tense up as he was speaking. But it was something that John Shepperd with Texas Foundation for Conservation said that seemed to really shake things up in the last week or so. Mr. Shepperd brought up the CMB Infrastructure Investment Group 85, LLC and the EB-5 visa program. As I mentioned back in June, not long after we found out about this, the EB-5 program is a way for foreign investors to invest in projects that perhaps banks or other investors find too risky, and opens up a way for them to have a pathway to citizenship. Without wanting to be xenophobic about it, we were certainly concerned about who this investor was putting $92 million into this project, a project that had also been touted many times as being important for selling surface and groundwater to local communities. Also, there’s still a connection to the power grid nearby despite the Big Brown powerplant on the north end of Fairfield Lake being dismantled a few years ago. Anyway, I gasped when I heard him mention it because we’ve been talking about it since June in the Facebook group, had told TPWD and other folks about it, including journalists, and it all seemed to fall on deaf ears. I guess it took the right person with the right connections to punch some buttons. More on what happened after this in a few paragraphs. You can listen to the audio of the public hearing here.
On Thursday, the 24th, there was another meeting for the TPW Commission and at the same time TPWD was filing an injunction in Freestone County to get access onto the entire 5,000 to do environmental due diligence. Negotiations with Todd Interests themselves went nowhere so TPWD went to court to get onto the property. They asked for a linear survey of all 5,000 acres, and a Phase 1 and Phase 2 Environmental Site Assessment. The judge granted them the linear survey and Phase 1 but not the Phase 2, though it was known that the state was likely going to appeal to a higher court to get the Phase 2. There were stipulations for getting the work done but all parties agreed to it. It also came out that Charles B. McFarland, a Houston eminent domain lawyer, is the state’s lawyer on this. (late add: Chairman Aplin was replaced with Chairman Hildebrand during that Thursday meeting. Chairman Aplin’s term had expired earlier this year and he was filling the space until Governor Abbott replaced him.)
There was some concern about what the state might find on the property, particularly on the north end where they had previously had no access. Yes, TPWD and TCEQ did monitoring work on the lake and the part that was the state park, but there was other land on the north end that was not theirs to access. This propelled me to actually dig a bit more into the Big Brown plant and research more on its history of pollution. TCEQ has a search function to look up reports but it actually works terribly so I had pretty much abandoned trying to get info from them. I did find a 2019 report from the Environmental Integrity Project that stated 100% of Texas power plants with records had pollution leaking from them. Big Brown had arsenic, cobalt, lithium, and selenium in groundwater monitoring wells with mean concentrations that were greater than the health-based thresholds. Those wells are all close to the north end of the 5,000 acres of interest. I have no idea which way groundwater is flowing in that area, I would presume towards the Trinity to the east, but I dunno, it’s all a little suspect.
Here’s the thing: Todd Interests bought the property As-Is and from what we can tell did no environmental due diligence. And let Vistra/Luminant off the hook for any environmental issues in the future. Are the alarm bells going off?? I’ll happily correct this statement if someone knows (and shows with proof) that an environmental survey was done for the property but sale records between Vistra/Luminant and Todd Interests say otherwise.
From here I went on a side quest looking at another power plant, the Alcoa plant, mine, and smelter near Rockdale, east of Austin. I can’t even recall what brought me to it, it was the pollution and water issues I’m sure, but I went on a ride that was also very fascinating. What happens to these power plants and mines after they are closed down? So, Luminant owned the Sandow plant and it closed in 2018. Alcoa had their smelting facility and mine. And then there were ties to the City of San Antonio getting the groundwater beneath the lignite at the Three Oaks Mine closer to Elgin. If you want to talk about these weird water issues going back decades, this is a good one to look at. Since this was a side quest, I won’t dwell much longer but I know there are people reading who will be interested so I’m dropping some links: Coal Hard Cash via the Austin Chronicle in 1999; Texas signed off on the restoration of this old mine. Now a leaky landfill is contaminating groundwater via the Texas Tribune, 2019; and Massive vision revealed for old Alcoa plant in Milam county via KXAN, July 2023. Oh, and Alcoa sold that property to a billionaire developer, 31K acres for $240 million, if we want to compare acreages and pricings to former properties owned by energy companies.
Side quest complete, let’s back up slightly to Wednesday the 23rd when a letter was published in the Freestone County Times from some very big names. It’s since been re-printed in the Dallas Morning News and Fort Worth Star Telegram but artist and fellow FLSP activist Martin Iles typed it up on a shareable image so it would be easier to disseminate. You can read it below. (Oh, this was also read aloud by Zach Spector from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation at the TPW Commission meeting.)
It’s the kind of thing we’ve been hoping for for months but we were glad that at least finally some names such as these took a stand in support of the park. These are people who would run in similar circles as those of Todd Interests, so it’s a big of a slap on the hand.
Ok, moving forward to last week, on August 30th we were alerted to a tweet from Texas Tribune correspondent Patrick Svitek that State Senator Lois Kolkhorst had written a letter/op-ed and sent it to a bunch of different news orgs throughout the state and presumably nationwide (you’ll see why I say that shortly), though I haven’t yet seen it published in any paper. A little info on Senator Kolkhorst first: She was behind SB 147 last spring that would have limited property ownership in Texas by citizens of North Korea, Iran, Russia, and China. It ended up dying in the Texas lege before it could be voted on and sent to the governors desk. Much of that stemmed from a deal in Val Verde County back in 2019 when a Chinese billionaire bought 140,000 acres there with plans for a wind farm. You can read the article to get more info on that, it’s another interesting side quest. The other thing about Senator Kolkhorst is she was on the Senate Committee on Water, Ag, and Rural Affairs, which back in early May decided to table Rep Orr’s bill, HB 4757, leaving it to die there after it had unanimously passed the House. So, while I think it is interesting she is curious about the EB-5 situation and willing to bring it to greater scrutiny, I’m also a little miffed it’s suddenly a pet project of hers when she and her fellow legislators could have done some better digging back in May about this. Here’s her letter, sorry it is wonky due to how it was presented on Twitter:
Well, the next day Shawn Todd goes back to KNES 99.1 FM in Fairfield to hang out with his BFF Buzz Russell to yet again (the third time) have some free PR for the locals in Freestone/surrounding counties. I knew he was going to launch into Senator Kolkhorst’s letter and that is certainly what he did. Going as far as to say this was about “her paranoia and self imposed schizophrenia.” Talk about a low blow to use mental illness to try to brush away the subject and completely avoid talking about it. I also certainly do not think he would have used that terminology had this been a male senator who wrote the letter. Mr. Todd referred to his investors as being from some families in Oklahoma (where he’s from) and Texas and tried to talk about how H. Ross Perot Jr uses EB-5 loans as an excuse to avoid deep diving into the subject. I have theories on some of those families he mentioned, particularly when you start looking hard at what is going on in Freestone County. Those families must have made up the remaining investment between the $92 million from the CMB and the $103 million that was paid to Vistra/Luminant for the property.
A few things: here’s the audio of an anti-eminent domain ad that runs on KNES every hour and a halfish. I had to sit through and listen one afternoon a few weeks ago to catch it and hear for myself:
Fairfield Land Management ties back to a family who owned one of the car dealerships in town (which is supposedly being sold) and the family also owns land directly adjacent to the state park—property that you can see was being cleared in a long narrow strip on the aerial imagery that was procured back in July when we saw the clearing at the park. This is likely the rumored air strip we heard about in June. Again, unless someone can explain otherwise—I’m all ears.
Here’s the audio I was able to get from the radio appearance last week. Sorry there are some time jumps as my phone randomly stopped recording a few times but I managed to get the biggest chunk. It also cut off the part where he called Senator Kolkhorst paranoid but other people heard him say it and I wrote it down after he said it. Still annoyed at my phone for that!
Then on Friday, September 1st, we find out that Senator Kolkhorst went on The Michael Berry Show to talk about this whole situation with her letter and the EB-5 investment. This is where I mention the national stage—because it is the first time it’s crossed that threshold this entire time, something we’ve honestly been astonished about. I certainly figured the destructive videos that came out in July would have done it but apparently it’s the threat of foreign investors in our natural resources that does the trick. I don’t get it but…there it is. I don’t think it is just foreign investors we have to worry about in the coming (currently going) Water Wars, US based firms are also doing that right now.
AND FINALLY—to close out last week, Texas Parks and Wildlife filed eminent domain proceedings in court. FINALLY. All of the previous steps had to be done but good lord, did this take forever.
It’s felt like we were in the Bad Place all summer but maybe, just maybe, we’re getting to the Good Place, finally.
It’s a lot, I know. Thanks for reading this, the 10-20 of y’all who are Texans and care enough! I’m so ready for this to be over so I can write other Texas nature things. There’s been so much drama—so, so much drama. And most of it never had to happen.
Y’all have a good week!
Misti writes regularly at Oceanic Wilderness and can be found on Instagram at @oceanicwilderness. She hosts two podcasts, Orange Blaze: A Florida Trail Podcast, and The Garden Path Podcast.